Agnieszka Holland (born November 28, 1948) is a Polish film and TV director as well as screenwriter. Best known for her political contributions to Polish cinema, Holland is one of Poland's most eminent filmmakers. She began her career as assistant to film directors Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda, and emigrated to France shortly before the 1981 imposition of the martial law in Poland.

She was often ill as a child, and spent much of her time writing, drawing and directing short plays with other children.[5] Holland's father died during a police interrogation when she was 13 years old. Although official reports labeled his death a suicide, his family and others believe he died by defenestration. Holland’s mother later married journalist Stanislaw Brodzki.[6]

Holland observed the Prague Spring of 1968 while in Czechoslovakia, and was arrested for her support of the dissident movement for the government reforms and political liberalization.[6] Holland graduated from FAMU in 1971.[6] Her daughter with Laco Adamik, Kasia (born December 28, 1972), is also a director.[1]

Holland began her career as an assistant director for Polish film directors Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda. Her credits include Zanussi's 1973 film, Iluminacja (Illumination), and Wajda's 1983 film Danton. She was first assistant director on Wajda’s 1976 Man of Marble, an experience which gave her the capability to explore political and moral issues within the confines of an oppressive regime.[5] Her first major film was Provincial Actors (Aktorzy Prowincjonalni), a 1978 chronicle of tense backstage relations within a small-town theater company which was an allegory of Poland's contemporary political situation. It won the International Critics Prize at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.

Knowing she could not return to socialist Poland, Holland wrote scripts for fellow Polish filmmakers in exile: Wajda’s Danton, A Love in Germany (1983), The Possessed (1988) and Korczak (1990). She also developed her own projects with Western European production companies, directing Angry Harvest (1985), To Kill a Priest (1988) and Olivier, Olivier (1992).[6] Holland received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film for Angry Harvest, a German production about a Jewish woman on the run during World War II.[9]

Holland's best-known film may be Europa Europa (1991), which was based on the life of Solomon Perel (a Jewish teenager who fled Germany for Poland after Kristallnacht in 1938). At the outbreak of World War II and the German invasion of Poland, Perel fled to the Soviet-occupied section of the country. Captured during the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, Solomon convinced a German officer that he was German and found himself enrolled in the Hitler Youth. The film received a lukewarm reception in Germany, and the German Oscar selection committee did not submit it for the 1991 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. However, it attracted the attention of Michael Barker (who handled Orion Classics’ sales at the time). Europa, Europa was released in the United States, winning the 1991 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay.[5]

Much of her film work has a heavy political slant. Government reprisals, stifling bureaucratic machinery, sanctioned strikes and dysfunctional families are represented in her early work.[5] In a 1988 interview Holland said that although women were important in her films, feminism was not the central theme of her work. She suggested that when she was making films in Poland under the Communist regime, there was an atmosphere of cross-gender solidarity against censorship (the main political issue). Holland said that she was interested in happenings between people, not the politics occurring outside them; in this context, “maybe you could say that all my movies are political”.[6]

In a 1997 interview, in response to how her experiences as a director have influenced her films, Holland said “filmmakers of the younger generation lack life experience” and, as a result, lack many of the tools needed to breathe humanity into their characters. Compared to directors of her generation, she feels that the younger generation comes from wealthy families, goes straight to film schools and watches movies primarily on videotape. Holland suggests that this results in what she calls a “numbness” and “conventionalization” of contemporary cinema.[6]

In 2007 Holland, her sister Magdalena Łazarkiewicz and her daughter Katarzyna Adamik directed the Polish political drama series Ekipa. On February 5, 2009, the Krakow Post reported that Holland would direct a biopic about Krystyna Skarbek entitled Christine: War My Love.[18] In June 2014 it has been reported that Agnieszka Holland is to direct few episodes of the 3rd season of House of Cards.